May 21, 2006
Awesome; I Fuckin' Shot That!
Not Awesome
Awesome; I Fuckin' Shot That!, shot during a 2004 Beastie Boys performance at Madison Square Gardens, bills itself as "an authorized bootleg." But the film's look and feel owe little to the bootleg aesthetic and it adds nothing of consequence to the vocabulary of the concert film.
Titles preceding the film inform us that it was made by giving handheld Hi8 cameras to 50 fans, who were then scattered throughout the crowd and instructed to "just keep filming." This might have been the beginning of a bold experiment to put the concert film back in the hands of the concertgoer or to elevate the concert bootleg to the status of art.
Instead, the filmmakers treat this amateur footage no differently than they do the footage from the professional DV cameras also shooting the show. These 50 cameras are regarded as nothing more than additional camera angles, additional editing possibilities. It seems like a missed opportunity.
The concert's first segment is assembled using a schizophrenic, MTV-style quick-cutting technique. Shots are rarely held for more than a few brief seconds, and the film flits madly from one vantage to another. This is about as far as you can get from the appearance of a traditional bootleg film, which by necessity consists of a few long, unbroken takes from one stable location.
Later, it does settle down a bit. But this portion of the film is marked by an excessive use of effects. Like a film student using Final Cut Pro for the first time, director Adam Yauch (MCA) indiscriminatingly plows through the options available: slow-motion, fast-motion, black and white, negative, high contrast, etc.
The film's best moments occur when it gives itself over to the fans--there's the guy who takes his camera with him into the men's room, for instance, or the hapless fellow in the nosebleed section who keeps imploring the people around him, "act excited and you'll get on the DVD!" to no avail.
Unfortunately, these moments are relatively few and far between, cut into an utterly conventional concert film. Awesome; I Fuckin' Shot That! will satisfy fans of the Beastie Boys, but it's unlikely to impress the casual moviegoer or to win the group any converts. Which is a shame, really. If the Beastie Boys can't make a fun, irreverent, DIY concert film who can?
